Welcome to The Prompt, your Monday dive into the world of AI that puts Asia front and center. From Big Tech’s power players to the region’s scrappy disruptors, we cover it all. Want full access to all our AI reporting? Subscribe to us here.
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In many ways, OpenAI owes its existence to Google. Several of the company’s founders, including Elon Musk, feared the search giant could end up dominating advanced AI, something they thought would be dangerous if controlled by too few people. So they launched OpenAI to compete in the space.
In some ways, they may have been too successful in putting pressure on Google and preventing it from dominating AI. Google is now reworking its core product and placing AI at the center just as companies like OpenAI need to prove the technology can become a durable business rather than an expensive feature.
Image credit: Made by Tech in Asia with the help of AI
Last week’s announcement that Google is making its biggest overhaul of Search in decades sent ripples through the tech world.
The changes go beyond bolting a chatbot to the top of the page. Google is turning Search into an AI assistant that can answer questions directly, monitor topics on a user’s behalf, browse the web itself, and even generate custom apps and visuals in response to prompts.
In short, Google wants to move away from being a gateway to the web and become the web’s operating system. The effect on small businesses (and publishers) could be devastating, as the change takes away clicks from them and keeps users’ eyes on whatever Google’s AI assistant decides to show.
Despite the billions invested, none of AI’s household names have turned a profit, something that only took Google three years to achieve. If anything, the greatest impact of AI firms on the balance sheet has been their ability to continue piling on expenses as they build out data center capacity.
If search is not the answer to the AI profit question, perhaps coding is. In this edition, we also speak with Thibault Sottiaux, head of Codex at OpenAI, about how Asia Pacific has become the company’s fastest-growing region for AI coding agents, with Singapore already one of Codex’s top five markets globally.
Peter Cowan, engagement editor
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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman / Photo credit: Antonello Marangi / Shutterstock
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